The present invention relates to a machine for linking together several wire links or pieces of costume jewelry, and more particularly, to certain improvements in a machine for the handling and closing of open-end wire links, as for example, those customarily employed in the making of costume jewelry.
The open oval wire links consist of breeched wire oval-shaped wire links which are held loosely together on a bar form magazine arrangement, or by the use of a suitable cement or tape, and are readily removable from the feeding bar supply seriatim, to be later closed in order to join together two or more links or pieces of costume jewelry.
In certain operations it has been found that the cement used to join the individual open links seriatim in bar form interfered with the subsequent assembly processes to which the pieces were subjected. In the present invention this problem has been overcome and allows for the use of either cement or tape strips to hold together the open-ended oval wire links in the bar form feeding arrangement prior to their being fed into the process, or the links may be free of each other.
In prior link-forming machines, the closed link was created by a tool with a force applied from both the top of the open link as well as from the outside of the link by the shaping of two different parts as in U.S. Pat. No. 2,256,265. In the present invention, the link closing force is being applied from the region below the open link by the shaping of one sliding part, with the link that is in the process of being closed held at the interior surface of the link structure.
This novel application of the link-closing force in the present invention, i.e., from below the link, allows elimination of extraneous mechanical apparatus previously mounted above the link-forming operation area, resulting in increased operator speed, convenience, and efficiency, due to an improved link-forming and linking area, worker visibility and accessability.
Earlier link-closing devices resulted in jamming of the apparatus during the feeding of the open links from their magazine position. The present device has eliminated this difficulty by the carefully precise correspondence in thickness between the open, oval-shaped links and the thickness of the link-forming slide tool itself.